Nov292011

A defense for motion control in games

Last night I read a screed on The Verge forums from a guy who lamented the fact that games have become too accessible. He remembers fondly the time spent as a youth when he played difficult games, and calls out the new Zelda game (Skyward Sword) as example of a “soft, hit-detection-free experience.”

Even though I’ve just started playing the game, I don’t feel this way about Skyward Sword at all. In fact, I’m finding it more difficult than other Zelda games I’ve played. There are a few reasons for this: mostly because of the precision motion control required, but also due to other changes, such as a shield that wears down over time, and fewer randomly found hearts. Playing this morning, I actually died to the first dungeon boss. While it could have been that my sleep-deprived mind couldn’t recognize patterns effectively, it’s also true that I played through Ocarina of Time and Majora’s Mask without ever coming close to dying.

Some Wii games certainly do have “floaty” controls, but these are games that have a broad audience (such as Wii Sports). However, most of the other games I’ve played on the Wii use the remote/nunchuck combo for a more traditional control scheme; perhaps they use the remote for pointing a cursor on the screen as well. While the Wii made broad strokes into a “blue ocean” of non-gamers, it still has a lot to offer to those who were raised on the original NES.

No comments · Written by Nathan at 4:41 pm · Tags ,

Sep202011

Sam Loutzenheiser

By watching television one should be able to guess that no matter how old you get, the same bullshit is always waiting to haunt you… but for whatever reason I reasoned that problems, no matter how complex, are in someway bound and finite. And in that reasoning, I came to the subconscience conclusion that if I work all of the existing ones out, I could actually live in peace… Sadly, this assumption was clearly wrong.

No comments · Written by Nathan at 12:38 pm · Tags

Aug152011

Review: Hario Skerton Coffee Mill

I’m becoming more and more of a coffee enthusiast in my old age. Probably because, unlike other hobbies that require a lot of time, enjoying coffee can be done every day in just a few minutes. The caffeine boost is also a big plus, especially when dealing with a daughter who likes to wake up screaming multiple times during the night.

I’ve gone through phases in my modes of coffee preparation. Of course, my first experience was simply making drip coffee with a traditional coffee maker. My first upgrade was using a French press. After that I started buying whole beans and grinding them myself with a blade grinder. Using a French press and grinding your own beans are regarded as the most important first steps you can take to make your coffee taste better: using a French press means you have to heat the water yourself, and can get it closer to the optimal 200 degrees Fahrenheit, while grinding at home means less time for coffee beans to go stale.

The next coffee upgrade I wanted to make was to switch from a blade mill to a burr mill. The difference is that a blade mill cuts your coffee, while a burr mill crushes it. In addition, blade mills have a hard time grinding coffee beans evenly — you have to grind your beans down to a fine powder before you’ll get a consistent particle size. Blade mills can also make the ground coffee slightly more bitter, due to heat from the friction of the blades.

Unfortunately, blade mills are also way cheaper than burr mills. An electric blade mill might set you back $50, while the burr equivalent might be more in the $200 range. I wasn’t sure I wanted to pay that much for an electric burr mill, so I set my sights on a hand-operated (!) mill from a company named Hario, the “Skerton.” It was priced at a much more reasonable $40. Luckily for me, I got one for my birthday last month, so thought I’d share my experience of using a hand-operated coffee mill for the past two months.

It’s not as annoying as you might think to have to grind coffee by hand. I kind of enjoy using the mill while waiting for my kettle to boil… it adds to the preparation ritual. That being said, I only have to grind enough coffee for a two-cup French press. If I needed to brew a pot of drip coffee, I would definitely be using the electric mill.

The Skerton produces a pretty even grind… basically it’ll look like what you get buying pre-ground coffee. You can adjust the coarseness of the end result, but the mill doesn’t handle very coarse grinds very well; you’ll get some large chunks of coffee bean here and there.

The construction of the device is pretty good. The top of the mill consists of a plastic hopper with a metal crank and ceramic burr. You can adjust the coarseness of the grind by unscrewing the crank and adjusting a metal washer that controls the height of the burr. The top screws into a heavy glass container, used for catching the ground coffee. As a nice touch, Hario includes a rubber bottom for the glass jar, which makes it easier to use the mill: it sticks to flat surfaces, making it less likely to slide around.

All told, I’m happy with the Skerton so far. My electric mill has been put out of sight, and I’ve even gotten the wife to use the Skerton a few times. It’s helped me elevate my coffee snobbery to the next level.

1 comment · Written by Nathan at 9:27 am · Tags , ,

May032011

Me: I didn’t program multitasking support in revolve ball
Me: cos I’m lazy Ed: you didnt ‘ganbaru’ M

Me: I didn’t program multitasking support in revolve ball
Me: cos I’m lazy
Ed: you didnt ‘ganbaru’
Me: oh shit! you’re right

No comments · Written by Nathan at 12:21 pm · Tags

Apr212011

Populate a form with a
serialized data string using jQuery

OK, so you know about the great jQuery utility method serialize(), which, when applied to a jQuery object that represents a form, will turn all the form data into a key/value serialized string. Randomly, I was asked if it was possible to do the reverse. jQuery doesn’t have a method like that baked in, so here’s my implementation.

function loadSerializedData(formId, data)
{
	var tmp = data.split('&'), dataObj = {};

	// Bust apart the serialized data string into an obj
	for (var i = 0; i < tmp.length; i++)
	{
		var keyValPair = tmp[i].split('=');
		dataObj[keyValPair[0]] = keyValPair[1];
	}

	// Loop thru form and assign each HTML tag the appropriate value
	$('#' + formId + ' :input').each(function(index, element) {
		if (dataObj[$(this).attr('name')])
			$(this).val(dataObj[$(this).attr('name')]);
	});
}

Is there a better way to do this? Let me know in the comments.

1 comment · Written by Nathan at 2:50 pm · Tags

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